Until last night I believed that even bad pizza was still good. And then I ate at Golden Mushroom.

Let me back up a bit to when we ordered. The chick behind the pizza counter moved so slowly that I actually think it took five minutes to order even though there was no one in front of us. After (finally) ordering I moved on from her to the next person with a glassy stare, the beverage guy. We asked him for a beer and four glasses of water. While it took us a minute or two to go back to our friend to find out what kind of beer he wanted, beverage guy made no move on the four waters to fill, preferring instead to stare into space like a zombie. We actually wondered if the staff was, in fact, inbred.

After our order of spag ‘n balls and pizza arrived, we sat there for five minutes waiting for silverware, and actually had to remind the silverware guy twice that we needed it. In the meantime, silverware-less, I ate the garlic bread that accompanied the spag ‘n balls. I thought it tasted odd, and that the garlic was weird and pasty. Little did I know that I would soon be wishing for more garlic bread, because the odd flavors were nothing compared to the travesty of the rest of the meal.

Before ordering the spag ‘n balls, we asked our friend who’d had it before, “How’s the $3 spaghetti?” She replied, “It’s $3 spaghetti.” That should have been our tip-off. The pasta was overcooked, and the pasta wore a mullet of sauce – cropped thick tomato parts on top and a long slick of juice in the back. The balls were overcooked and certainly didn’t improve anything. Imagine what you’d get if you ordered spaghetti from Carrow’s. Now imagine someone took a dump on it. (That part was just for fun. It didn’t taste like *actual* fecal matter. I’m guessing anyway.)

We also shared a pizza with tomatoes and fresh garlic. Now I’m no genius, but last I checked the pizza crust is supposed to be cooked through. And also when someone requests garlic you don’t cover the entire pie in it so that’s all you taste. And also, cheese on a pizza is supposed to be mozzarella, not cheddar thrown in with the mozzarella for good measure. It was hard to decide what was better – the pizza or the spag ‘n balls. I liked having the variety so I didn’t ruin my taste buds forever too long on each one.

The pizza place itself is curious in that it looks like a bar from the 70s where every surface is covered in wood paneling. There are sports jerseys hanging from the walls, and curiously there were lots of people there hanging out and watching sports on TV. We could only assume they knew the people, er zombies working there. Also, the logo of Golden Mushroom is an elf sitting on a mushroom. Between the name and the logo I can’t help but wonder if the drug references explain the inbred zombie no-brain-cells-left servers.